The lines in this photo are really what make it interesting. On the left half of the frame especially, there are three distinct leading lines that draw the eye to the darkness in the back right third of the photo - the silhouette of the mountain in the background, the line of light from passing cars, and the shadow of the edge of the road. All of them work well here to guide the viewer around the photo, especially because one of those lines is tonally the brightest thing in the photo (the line of passing cars). The brake lights cause a sort of tonal gradient from the bottom of the photo to the top, with the trees and road gradually getting darker and darker as the eye follows those three lines into the pitch-black area in the top right.
This photo was actually an accident, but I ended up loving the way it's lit (brake lights on the left; headlights on the right, the moon as a backlight) because of how it controls the tone of each tree. It's also full of consistently vertical lines which make it interesting, especially since the verticals are all different textures and thicknesses. The structure of this photo, then, is offset by the silhouette of the sloping mountain in the background, and the circular glow of the moon. Both are on opposite ends of the tonal spectrum; very dark, and very bright. The trees all fall somewhere in between, with the strikingly white tree on the right third being the tonal medium between the mountain and the moon.
If there's anything I really love, it's frames within frames. Shape-wise, this photo is pretty cool because there's so much going on. The line between the patchwork mural and the bricks almost hits the exact vertical center of the picture, disrupted by the person standing there. Her head is framed by the mural, and the lower half of her body is framed by the brick. Tonally, the mural is full of bold, bright shapes with diagonals and sharp edges, while the brick contrasts with its rhythmic rectangles and monochrome color scheme. I'd be curious to show this picture to some people and ask what their eye is drawn to first - for me, it's the person standing in the middle, because she's dark against the white bits of the mural.
There are some really cool things here that I'm very jealous of.
ReplyDeleteThe lines of different tone in your first photo are really interesting and cool, and unlike anything I've seen before. Because of the leading lines in the main part of the photo, the really bright stuff isn't necessarily what draws my attention, but it does compete, and it fragments the photo in a neat way.
I like that you pointed out how the tone of each tree is different because, at different places, they're capturing light differently. The three brightest trees give the division of the photo a really great shape and feel.
This photo is interesting because of the blocks of tone. The top part feels like it has a limited tonal palette, and the bottom part does too, although those two palettes are definitely not the same portion of the spectrum. I love the way the shapes all feel like they're about the same tone. The whites and yellows are clearly brighter, but because of the color difference, the difference doesn't seem to be as big.